55 Pounds Down: Exercise

I have a pedometer that counts my steps, and I add that, at the end of the night, to my notepad where I record all the food I ate.

I didn’t do this from the beginning. It developed over time. I have a goal for a number of steps, based partly on step counts from the past (my day job runs a walking thing every year and gives me a pedometer and challenges me to count my steps for a few months and then gives me an Amazon gift card, which is very nice of them), and I push to make that goal every day I can.

I can’t always. That’s okay.

There are other forms of exercise. Dance. Martial arts. Basketball.

Once upon a time, I lived in a city where I could exist without a car. I walked everywhere. If there was someplace I wanted to go that was too far to walk, I walked to the bus stop or the train station. I walked across bridges and I walked from one end of the city to the other. I walked through parks. I walked through neighborhoods. I walked to buy food and I walked home from all these places.

Granted, you can’t necessarily play football all the way from your front door to your day job or the supermarket. And you can’t dance your way from the train station to the museum without attracting a bit of attention.

You can always add walking, perhaps on breaks at the day job, or after work. But it doesn’t have to be walks. Don’t search for the closest parking lot to the store.

As a side note: I suppose you can’t add walking if, for whatever reason, you can’t walk, either temporarily or permanently. This doesn’t excuse you from exercise. I used to go to a gym on Long Island where a man came in every day on his wheelchair, took off his prosthetic legs in the locker room, rolled out to the floor, and worked out every day. He got in his cardio by using a type of bicycle that had been re-worked so that he would pedal with his hands. He set himself up on weight machines and lifted all of them. He did this every day, and he was in excellent shape, even if he had no legs.

You don’t have to go that extreme. But you have to find something and fit it in, and it helps a lot if it doesn’t feel like work. If it feels like fun, you’ll do it. Or if it doesn’t feel like anything–hence, the pedometer counting steps as you walk from the car to the back corner of the grocery store and back. Fun helps. You’ll play football or basketball or baseball or something, not because you’re getting a workout, but because you’re playing. You’re not seven anymore. (Neither am I.) That doesn’t mean you don’t get to play.